You might think umpteen Fast and Furious's are enough to celebrate the thrills of illegal street car racing. You'd be wrong. Someone decided another franchise should get off the starting grid in which the characters do exactly the same thing: race souped-up vehicles like maniacs for cash bounties.

We all know originality is hard to come by in Hollywood but Need For Speed really does take the chequered flag for derivative tosh. It's based on a videogame which either makes the picture a little less shameless (at least it's inspired by a legitimate property) or even more so. I'm not really sure.

Rest assured though it doesn't merit the talents of Aaron Paul (Jesse Pinkman in TV's Breaking Bad) and the splendid Imogen Poots who have to exchange inane banter as they speed across America in a Ford Mustang in order to compete in an illegal race in California. "Never judge a girl by her Gucci boots" trills Poots' perky Brit, Julia Madden, after hanging out of the Mustang's window at 150mph to help perform a mid-freeway refuel.

The film’s target audience won’t be going for character complexity and a meaningful plot

The likeable Poots brings lots of spark to her role as a blonde petrol-head and Paul performs with impressive intensity but rarely have such an intelligent pair of performers been lumbered with such daft characters.

As they burn up the tarmac, wilfully attract the police, destroy property and endanger lives, not least their own, you wonder what kind of casting mix-up took place: these characters should really be played by Johnny Knoxville and Jessica Alba.

Paul plays a mechanic and street racer, Tobey Marshall, who has so little going on under his own bonnet that he concocts one of the dumbest revenge plots in movie history against arch rival Dino Brewster (Dominic Cooper having fun in panto-villain mode).

Dino is responsible for the death of Tobey’s friend Little Pete (Harrison Gilbertson) in a street race, a death for which Tobey takes the rap and serves two years in jail.

You might think the horror of seeing his pal incinerated in a fireball would make Tobey think twice before racing again (for me it brought uncomfortable memories of Fast and Furious actor Paul Walker’s recent death).

Aaron Paul and Dominic Cooper in Need For Speed [FACEBOOK]

Far from it. Straight out of jail Tobey breaks his parole to drive hell-for-leather from New York state to California in order to compete in a legendary underground event, The De Leon, which he hopes will give him the opportunity to exact retribution on Dino.

How is unclear - he’s much more likely to get himself in trouble, which he does - but that doesn’t stop him tearing across America with Julia in the passenger seat.

She’s there to represent the owner of the multi-million pound Mustang which is on loan. Any sensible person would jump out at the first opportunity but Julia takes a perverse pleasure in risking life and limb.

“If you’re driving like a maniac because you want me out of the car it isn’t going to work” she says brightly. Still, the pair have IQs off the scale compared to Tobey’s posse, including a chortling nutter who acts as air support, flying by turns a Cessna plane, a TV news helicopter and a US army helicopter. How he manages to acquire them is anybody’s guess.

Another we know is severely challenged because on learning Julia is British he grins like a berk and says “I really love Piers Morgan”.

Of course, the film’s target audience won’t be going for character complexity and a meaningful plot.

They’ll be there for the action and here the picture scores with some extremely well-choreographed and realistic race scenes in a variety of settings from city streets to picturesque desert scrubland.

However, there isn’t quite enough excitement or sheer mayhem to sustain the lengthy running time (130 minutes) and compensate for the formulaic story.